


Too Dark to See (But I Will)

by anr



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-16
Updated: 2011-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-04 11:10:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/393167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anr/pseuds/anr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first year.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Dark to See (But I Will)

**Author's Note:**

> Request: McCoy, post movie, reactions to vulcan being destroyed, "glad we didn't die sex", and one partner courting the other without the other being aware of it.

After surviving the clusterfuck that is their maiden voyage, space doesn't bother him as much as it used to.

Sure, it's still dangerous and deadly and disease-ridden and just as likely to kill him twelve nanoseconds after beta shift ends every goddamned day, but it's also predictable and constant and _known_. Certainty, he can appreciate.

Serving with Jim, on the other hand --

  


* * *

  


The explosion rips through levels below with amazing speed, atmosphere venting instantaneously. Hooking his arm around the rung, he holds onto Jim with every bit of strength he can muster, cursing pointlessly as he does. Below him, he can see Nurse Chapel doing the same with Lieutenant Mele, the two clinging desperately to each other and the ladder as the pressure in the Jeffries tube vacuums into space.

"Hold on!" he shouts, knowing they can't hear him, knowing they already are, knowing --

Mele falls, sucked down and away in less than a heartbeat, Chapel's suddenly free arm pinwheeling as she pulls away from the ladder and --

  


* * *

  


He doesn't dream, much.

The odd nightmare, occasionally. Jo falling from a tree branch and him not there in time to catch her. Jim and Spock and Sulu drawn and quartered in an alien butchery on an away mission gone spectacularly wrong. The Enterprise a ghost ship and the dead shadowing him down emergency-lit hallways as he runs and runs and --

  


* * *

  


He visits just about every Vulcan colony there is that first year.

Depressing places, the lot of them. Too few people, too many empty spaces. He assists with five births one time, immunising and inoculating little sons and daughters that will never replace the billions that have disappeared, and it is seeing the new life brought forth to replace the old that hits him harder than all the death did.

After, back on Enterprise, he sits in his office and drinks from his flask, steadily and surely, until he can't remember the warmth of those little bodies Chapel handed into his arms. Until he can't remember the delicate curves of their ears, and the faint green hue of their --

  


* * *

  


Spock and Jim get themselves stuck together -- _literally_ \-- and if that's not the funniest shit he's seen since they got to this godforsaken rock of a planet that Jim would have -- _also_ literally -- fallen off of had Spock not grabbed him, he's not a doctor.

" _Don't move_ ," he says, angling the laser he's going to use to separate Spock's hand from Jim's ankle. "I don't think none of us are going to be happy if I slip."

Spock freezes and Jim laughs and even Uhura looks like she's hiding a smile of her own as --

  


* * *

  


Scotty's special yuletide brew gives several of the crew hangovers potent enough to rival the after-effects of a week long rest-and-rec on Risa, and he's tempted to shut the still down once and for all this time except one of those several is Chapel, and another is himself, and what little he can remember is something he's pretty sure he'd like to have happen again, so --

  


* * *

  


Jim dies, and lives, and almost dies, and keeps living. He's either the unluckiest son of a bitch in the universe, or the luckiest.

"Damnit, man," he says, pushing him out of his infirmary with a goodnatured shove, "aren't you ever careful?"

Jim grins, and salutes, and backs away from the med doors and into the passing Ensign T'Pen. His grin widens. "Thankfully not," he says, turning and falling into step beside her and --

  


* * *

  


He goes drinking with Jim back on Jupiter Station and somehow ends up drinking with Admiral Pike instead and that's probably not the greatest idea in the universes, drinking with the man who could strip him of his rank and privileges faster than the onset of a case of Levodian flu, but this is also the man who he once performed brain-stem surgery on whilst escaping from a red matter black hole largely caused by a time-travelling Romulan, so --

  


* * *

  


He fills out his one hundred and thirteenth death certificate the day Jo turns seven, planet-side, and that's probably not the only reason he ends up retching in his quarters, after, but it's good contender for the lead role.

Footsteps outside his bathroom. He opens his mouth to tell the computer to lock the door and closes it again, too late, as Chapel steps inside. Without saying a word, she wets a small towel and folds it over the back of his neck, her touch soft and soothing and --

  


* * *

  


He dreams of back home, Georgia as far as his eyes can see. Jo's walking beside him, her hand in his, and in the distance, just on ahead a little ways, a familiar form, a familiar sight, blonde hair glinting in the starlight and --

  


* * *

  


He's wrist-deep in Ensign S'ni'bgal's chest cavity when Jim's voice echoes through the ship, _we're okay, we're alright, we've survived_ , and he nods to Chapel.

"Laser cutter," he says.

"Yes, Doctor," she says, and --

  


* * *

  


He kisses her in the shadows of the colony temple, his hands on the rough, sun-warmed stones and her fingers tight around his hips as he grinds against her, restless and wanting and far too impatient to get back to their visitors quarters, or the Enterprise, or any place at all really.

She breaks the kiss and nips at the curve of his jaw, his neck. Breathes, " _Len_ ," against his skin as he brings one hand down to cup her breast through the fabric of her uniform, as her fingers scrape over the seams of his.

"Chris," he manages, close, so close, so --

  


* * *

  


In the mess, one late night, Jim on his left and Chapel on his right, Spock and Uhura and Scotty and Sulu and Rand all around, laughing and laughing and _laughing_ \--

  


* * *

  


\-- well.

At least it's interesting, he thinks.

On the other side of his desk, Chapel looks up from the records she's going over, their end-of-year reports now due in less than forty-eight hours, and gives him a curious look. "Something wrong?"

Shaking his head, he turns back to his PADD. He smiles. "Not today."

  


* * *

The End

**Author's Note:**

> ORIGINAL URL: <http://anr.livejournal.com/486173.html>


End file.
